Strangers and Exiles

My approach to Scripture right now is to examine the prevailing emotion of the day and to submit it to the Word. I’m always a bit discomfited by my own surprise at Scripture’s ability to pierce and to discern (Hebrews 4:12). We think of ourselves as the exception and find ourselves to be the rule.

For today, I'm fighting a feeling akin to loneliness that is probably most accurately defined as a sense of exile. I am expelled from the native land of my heart and mind—desires, hopes, ambitions, pleasures, plans—and forced into a period of wandering and wondering. Hence I turn to Hebrews 11:

"These all died in faith, not having received the things promised, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and having acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles on the earth. For people who speak thus make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of that land from which they had gone out, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city."

These men and women of faith who are being commended by the author of Hebrews acknowledged that they were strangers and exiles. They did not seek to disguise the fact or to remedy it in their own strength; in fact, the text seems to say that they could go back to their native lands. Yet they chose to remain in exile because they desired a new and better country. They chose exile because they trusted the one who was changing even their desires and the "home" that formed their identities.

When my old desires, hopes, ambitions and pleasures taunt me, it is helpful to me to remember that I am now seeking a homeland. Mine is a purposeful exile—though I did not choose it—and it is leading me to a heavenly country. Acknowledging that I am truly an exile is an important way that I can expose both the truth and the lie. The truth is that the Lord has sent me into this period of wandering; the lie, which is rehearsed in my mind almost hourly, is that I am “cut off from his sight.” In this way, I must talk to myself rather than listen (as Martin Lloyd Jones would say).

I also take this counsel from Hebrews 11: I must fight the temptation to think constantly of the country I left, lest I should turn back at the first opportunity. I must submit those old desires and dreams to the plans and promises of God—even if I only greet them from afar. He can be trusted to fulfill each and every one of his promises to me, and he is not confined by time or space in that fulfillment. In fact, of these exiles it is written, “Therefore, God is not ashamed to be called their God, for he has prepared for them a city.”

A home. A homeland. A place where desires are pure and purely satisfied, where hope is seen, and where pleasures are eternal. You are an exile, Michele. Keep walking.